Amateur-built and experimental aircraft - Australian Transport Safety ...

most helpful. About 15 per cent of people rated the regulator as helpful both as a
build resource and as a test flight resource.
The role of the regulator as a test flight resource has probably diminished over time
as the SAAA and other organisations have taken on self-administration
responsibilities. At one stage, CASA published its own test flight manual. Some of
the respondents to this survey wrote that they used this document when preparing
for test flight.
Figure 81: Rating of regulator as a test flight resource
Associations between test flight resources
Correlations between all flight testing resources were positive and statistically
significant. The strongest correlations were between LAMEs and the regulator,
internet and LAMEs, and builders and LAMEs. In other words, respondents who
used LAMEs as a resource were more likely to also use the regulator, internet and
other builders as well. The weakest test flight resource correlation was between
internet and associations. Correlations between test flight resources are found in
Table 23 (Appendix C).
Other test flight resources
Survey respondents were given an opportunity to describe other flight test resources
in addition to manufacturers, internet, other builders, associations, and regulators.
There were a small number of responses in the other category including:
• test pilots or other experienced pilots
• newsletters or books
• aircraft distributor
• the name of a particular person from the regulator.
3.6.2 Initial test flights
Maiden flight
Two-hundred and sixty-eight of 278 respondents who built and flew an ABE
aircraft recorded who conducted the maiden flight. Figure 82 shows that 115 of 268
respondents conducted the maiden flight themselves (builder), 80 of 268 used
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